**4. Conclusion**

Today, LEYF is the largest charitable childcare social enterprise in the UK, with 40 community nurseries, employing 850 staff including 100 apprentices to provide 4500 children with high quality education and care. The social-enterprise model as defined by the LEYF is one way of providing ECEC to children from disadvantaged families or living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. It is a model built on trust, a sense of human dignity and hope for the future. It is a new source of positive social change, navigating between the different modes of business-led and government-led transformation.

The key question for consideration is that given how much we know about the benefits of ECEC for all children but especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, why are childcare social enterprises not replicated? Right now, the models of ECEC available for children from disadvantaged children are not effective. They rely on the goodwill of individuals or settings wanting to do something positive for

children from disadvantaged communities or disjointed political initiatives. Neither result in a sustained national policy approach which could remove the ECEC lottery which fails too many children.

The LEYF approach has demonstrated that it can be replicated across London especially while also generating cultural and social capital and delivering social impact. We therefore need a national conversation about ways to extend the LEYF model more widely, by using a range of funding and investment models designed to make ECEC accessible and affordable and in doing so reduce child poverty and support parental employment as part of the national economic infrastructure. This would be a win not just for children living with disadvantage but for all of society.
